Demons I Catch and Release

One time it occurred to me I might be in a horror movie was when I watched my brother's foot get caught in a department store escalator. A tall stranger pulled my brother's foot from his shoe. My brother lost a toenail. The stranger wouldn't be thanked. He left in a hurry. I was screaming. The store manager had to calm me down. He said, "This isn't helping."

My brother did the same for me when I was 18. He found me on the floor having a seizure. He opened the front door and screamed. We have been each other's voices. We have also been each other's tormentors.

My brother has always had leg problems, starting with the time I told him he could fly. I left the room and went downstairs to watch my mother boil spaghetti. My brother jumped off the top bunk and broke his leg. I remember this like I remember the dream I had last night where I was floating. Someone floated up behind me, and I kicked them in the face. Today, I confess. Many of my dreams end in violence.

A dream I have once a year has me battling wild dogs. They jump for my throat, and I pull their jaws apart to kill them. I used to fear dogs. My mother once took me to the library to show me a picture book that was supposed to mollify children who feared dogs. It worked. Josh and I took a walk the other night, and a dog in a yard did the shifting dance of a deer. Ears up. Eyes wet. Alert. I have been told both dogs and bees can smell fear. I try to give them nothing to smell.

But yes, I have felt true dread. A few years ago I heard someone open the kitchen door of my apartment and turn on a power drill. It was my former landlord. I came into the kitchen holding scissors over my head. My former landlord was changing the locks. He hadn't called to warn me. I was prepared to defend myself. Then there was the time a woman yelled from her car about killing us "faggots." I do not believe in possession, but I do believe each person can transform into something terrifying. If there is a Hell, we carry it with us.

I'm letting my mohawk grow into a floppy mane. I've kept it short the last six months for whatever aerodynamic and penile reason. There's more white hair now. That's just great. I want to be older than I am. In the meantime, I'm mastering a few things. Pie, of course. Knitting and crochet. Control of words. Lately, photography. I'm learning all I can, using all the cameras I can hold. Give me a few years, and maybe I'll take a good picture.

There is an EVENT soon where you can come and taste my pies, order my pies, buy my pies. I will have free samples. I will take orders for future pies. I will have a few pies ready for purchase. There will be other vendors, too. One does silver. One does soap. One does mosaics. One does jam and ceramics. Assembled, we are a crafty Voltron.

I'm baking a pie right now. It's going to work with Josh tomorrow. I will not get to taste it. That's all right. I know how this works. It takes a village to eat a pie.

(Happy Halloween!)

This Is How We Do It

We ate at the Indian restaurant last night. It was a reward for just having the idea. There's a look Josh and I give each other. We put on our shoes. We close the blinds. We go out on the porch. Josh holds the screen door while I lock the front door. We ready ourselves for joy.

Josh felt guilty about it last night, so he asked if I was sure. He couched it in terms of addiction. He asked me to provide a quick list of pros and cons. "We have to eat," I said. "But do we have to eat Indian food?" he said. "We could be good and eat cereal and bananas."

There is only so much time we have on this earth to eat Indian food.

While we ate we talked about the man at the art fair who saw a photographic triptych and said, "I heard you can do that on your phone now." Josh cuffed my forearm and squeezed. He could have had a baby ready to come out. Did I hear that guy? I heard that guy.

An artist who guarded art with me one summer was at the restaurant. He is an art prince. He came over to our table and complimented my book. I had the taste of buttered lentils on my tongue. His name is Matt Jacobs. Get a clue, you guys. Look him up and love him. Someone in a position of authority once admitted to me that she lusted after Matt's swimmer legs.

If I ever work the register at a liquor store, I'll put out a tray that says, "TAKE A SECRET, LEAVE A SECRET."

It doesn't get old. These attractive men who've read my book and say so. They look as if they've just stepped out of the shower to tell me to keep up the good work. Three times and as many men at that very restaurant. If you wanted to do sympathetic magic on me you could do it in the restroom there. If there are such a thing as ley lines, that's where they lay. Write your desire on toilet paper and flush it. I suggest you give it a while, though. A friend is already doing some witchcraft to lure me to Seattle. She is such a powerful witch that she once convinced an entire town in Montana to hate her.

I'm sorry my snake is not a cat. But look how uncanny she is as a noose. And it's not even Halloween.

Here's a story I wrote because a cute boy asked me to write it: RIGHT THERE IN KANSAS CITY.

Natural Light

My narcissism is leaking. All these poses. You've seen what I'm doing if you follow me anywhere else online. Me, me, me. Josh is taking a class in traditional photography, and the left hand has to know what the right hand is doing. We have 35mm cameras. I'm learning about all the basics from Josh's notes, from Josh's explanations, from Internet hand holding. I shot a roll of black and white film last week, but I still haven't developed it. I have this other camera I've been using. It's a digital point and shoot. People often say they're playing with something. I'm playing with this. I'm my own subject because I'm always there when I need me.

My local hardware store has a display of regional sodas, including the ginger ale from my hometown in Kentucky. It's been a long minute since I had one. Mostly I don't drink soda. There was a recent time I mixed root beer and cheap whiskey, and the evening turned cartwheels for me. "Too much sugar," says the man who drank four cups of masala chai today at the Indian restaurant.

I'm writing. I don't stop writing. People ask, but the answer is always the same. The projects are as follows: some longer stories, a novel, various and sundry. That's in order of importance.

A gorgeous professor offered me a mentholated cigarette outside a bar the other day, and if this were even a year ago I would've accepted it. I'd just been to his summer class to read from my book and answer questions. One of the questions was about my frequent use of animals. I gave some deep-fried answer about being from the South and how animals are tools for learning about life and death while maintaining a safe psychological distance from one's own mortality. Blah, blah, blah. The student who asked the question said he was reminded of spirit animals, and hey, that's as good a theory as any.

I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about ghosts. But where are the ghosts of animals? I came across a photo online of a hundred deer clogging tree trunks in a midnight forest. All the deer were facing the camera, and I thought I'd finally seen it. Not spirit animals but animal spirits. When a cat is chasing nothing, maybe it's chasing another cat. A dead cat.

I saw a cricket on its back today. Its antennae were whipping. Its legs were still. I imagined it wasn't long for this world, but what do I know about crickets? I know I used to buy them to feed a lizard. I know en masse they smell like a bag of bad potatoes. I know even in their "escape-proof" container they sometimes form a standing chain and set each other free.

Low Magic

We have an occasional roommate. You knew that. She lived with us the majority of one summer and the minority of this summer. Now she's trying to get tangled up in the Los Angeles mess. Television and movie production. Back of the house stuff. The fingerprints you're not taught to recognize as fingerprints. Anyway, she's gone now. The tea kettle won't get used until she returns, whenever she returns. It sits on the back burner collecting splatters of oil from all the spices I fry.

There's a homemade meal almost every night. When there's not, Josh gets antsy. Don't read too much into it. We favor a routine. When our roommate's here, the routine becomes even more solid. We mimic a family. Special considerations. Our roommate is the only person I know who dislikes basil. I've told you. Even though it's summer, our roommate never found basil on her plate.

One night at dinner we talked about the big trial news of our childhood, OJ Simpson, and how our teachers either did or didn't allow us to watch the verdict in class. Our roommate learned the verdict in the hallway when a boy yelled, "THE JUICE IS LOOSE!"

I don't think we said a word about the Zimmerman verdict. I still don't know what to say. I continue to read. Read and read and read.

The sun is out, but I hear thunder.

The UPS guy just came up on the porch and shouted that he was the UPS guy. A woman was with him, training him in the proper UPS ways. She said he was doing a good job. Then, "Well, your parking could be better." He had stopped the truck in the middle of the street.

I had pork for lunch with a friend who refuses pork. It's the sacrifice he makes to pay for other sins. We talked about dabbling. I told him how several years ago I hollowed out an egg and stuffed it with herbs and desperate pleas for money. The plan was to bury the egg in the yard and see if money manifested. I never buried the egg. It sits on a shelf in a decorative bell jar. My friend said the desire for stuff like that was like the desire for pork. That it wasn't kosher. Neither of us said the word "sorcery." Not out loud. But I repeated it over and over in my head until it sounded like the stupidest word in the world.

You want to know what I'm doing with my time. I'm working on a novel. I'm working on some stories. I'm half-assing my tumblr called GUYS + PIES. If you ever wanted to see me in my underwear, now's your chance. It's summer. It's tumblr. I'm wearing a mohawk and not much else.

Seven Hills

Did you know I have a brother? Well, I do have a brother, and he's moving to Seattle. He flew my mother and me up there last week. It was a small family reunion. The first night, we had the freshest nectarines and a white wine that pretended to be champagne. My brother and mother salivate for the sweeter stuff. We sat on beds and uncovered the rocks in our family history, the ones we'd been stepping on for years. Good and bad but all ours. Under some of them, snakes. Under others, diamonds. We posed for a picture in the airport. Now I know we're all related. We share a nose.

A brief word on the men in Seattle. My eyes never went hungry. Let's just say. My brother took me to a gay bar. (Did you know my brother is also gay? He is.) I sometimes forget how handsy gay guys can be en masse. At this bar I was touched and groped and caressed and hugged. All in passing. Only once did I see the face of the guy grabbing my waist. I approved. Smiled. Drank something that was intended to taste like Froot Loops. It did taste like Froot Loops.

I recognized one of the go-go boys from "the Internet." He's in pictures, you see. A stranger pressured me to tip this go-go boy. The stranger said, "This is his job. Give him some money." I'd tried to pay my bus fare earlier, but my brother told me to save my money for souvenirs. I was trying to decide whether or not tipping a go-go boy counted as a souvenir. Yes, I decided, but the go-go boy was gone. Soon after, so were we.

We walked back to our hotel in the rain and talked about our different coming out experiences. I learned what happened when I didn't come out to my brother. Other people told him. One youth minister sat him down to tell him how hellish and wrong I was for being gay. If I'm getting the timeline right, that was probably the same year I met Josh, the man I've been with for over nine years now. Not a competition, but that's longer than some of the marriages in my family.

Another night in Seattle I ran around with Molly Laich. You know her. She's responsible for the second half of this VIDEO. We've only been in the same physical space twice. Whiskey is our mutual friend. We sat in the bendable accordion section of a bus and hugged each other over Roger Ebert. Maybe cried. I slept on her couch. Watched her backyard chickens peck the ground in the morning. Avoided goodbye by leaving quietly and Googling my way to the bus.

And my mother. I hadn't seen her in over a year. Since the funeral of her mother. We were crossing the street on the way back from Pike Place, and a homeless man asked us for money. My mother stopped in the middle of the crosswalk as the light was about to change, touched the man's arm and said, "What do you need, sweetie?" My mother gave the man some money. The kindness in my mother's voice undid me. No annoyance. No patronizing. Simple compassion.

Later, my mother and I misunderstood each other and had words. We sat in silence by the water. I looked at my mother and saw myself. Except for the kindness. It's there for her as a force. A constant consideration. A choice she made somewhere along the line to balance out the darkness inherent in our family. If it's there for me, I don't know what it looks like.

Probably it looks like pie.

Terrible Lizards

June, huh? I've gotten to wear shorts, wanted to wear shorts, for the first time since 2009 or 10. On Facebook, my grandmother asked me where the pounds went. Come home and she'll feed me. She's in the country with the rest of my family at the big reunion. They've found a lake closer to the ancestral home. I made the call. Sorry I can't be there, but. One of my cousins jokingly accused me of faking my online presence. "That's not what you look like." Well, that's what I look like now.

I haven't seen my family in the flesh in a while. That's too bad. I'll see my mother and brother in Seattle next week. The last time I saw them was a funeral. Then my car lost the last of its lives. I decided not to replace it. I live an almost moneyless existence. Someone at Josh's work paid me for pies, and Josh told her to make the check out to him because he didn't think I had a checking account. I do. Still, there's so little money in it I understand his confusion.

But we like our life. It's exactly the life we want right now. I know my family worries. Maybe it's because I approach 30 and my list of accomplishments is short but pleasant. I wrote a book. It was published. I'm writing another book. I keep a house up. I bake a pie that turns a party prayerful. I've raised a snake from a snip of string to a garden hose. I'm as good as married and have been for nine years. In short, I'm happy. I'm content.

There's a tree out front with white flowers, and when the summer heats up, the flowers fall dead on the lawn. That charms me. It feels very Japanese to see our lawn that way. But only for a day. Then the flowers turn brown and come in on our shoes. Our floors are dotted. Spiders. The flowers look like flattened spiders. I'm fooled every time. This isn't Australia. The spiders don't get that big here. I've never peeled up a dead spider like it was a wet scab. These flowers, though. They stick.

I take it back about the spiders. There are tarantulas. I mean, not in Kansas City, but in America. So we've got big spiders, too. I heard there are some that eat birds. I wonder if they find poultry as disappointing as I do. For one, I will never understand turkey. I guess it feeds a crowd, and that's why it's an enduring tradition. There are wild turkeys near the airport. From a distance they always scare me into thinking they're something else. Dinosaurs, if I'm honest. We know now that dinosaurs and birds are more or less the same animal just at different times. The ostrich, above all others, is dangerous and efficient. A single kick and you're dead. Lots of organisms naturally work that way. But we had to invent the gun and justify its lasting presence by giving it fetish reverence. I doubt a rattlesnake gets dreamy about its own venom. There's no telling, though. I'm not a rattlesnake.

A friend is here for another month. She's been here before and will be here again. Our house can handle it. The library alone could trap a person. We added more shelves this week. There is now a wall of books separating the dining room and the living room. Formidable. I get the feeling I'm eating dinner in a used bookstore. In fact, some of these books still have price stickers on them. A few of them are wrapped in plastic, our own version of keeping the furniture pristine.

Josh is a good literary steward. There's an angel in a comic I'm reading, and his pet project is to collect all the written word of humankind. I sometimes wonder if that's the endgame here. Josh has admitted his ideal superpower would be immortality. All the time in the universe.

I have stuff HERE and HERE.

On the way home from the grocery yesterday, an older man and woman passed us. The woman said, "What time's the party?" The man looked over into our grocery bags. "Those are just groceries," he said. "Nothing fun."

Sandra

It snowed here two weeks ago, which set a record. I was in Montana one June, and I stepped down from a van onto fresh snow. It all melted the next day. I'd never seen the stuff in summer. The lakes there were sky blue with what? Sky? No, it was the cold, I guess. But that was Montana. Here is Missouri, and the cold was grey, not blue. Josh and I were wearing t-shirts and looking for a UPS drop-box the night before the snow. It'd been warm enough for me to sit on the porch that day and watch the guy across the street mow his lawn in shorts and a tank top. Then the temperature fell. The wind rose. It rained, then iced, then snowed. Josh and I crossed our arms against the cold. I joked we were in Scotland. I've never been to Scotland. 

A new friend tells me the currents are erratic from the melting ice caps. That's probably right. If I were more superstitious I'd say the snow was an omen. My people are having a time. One of my cousins, Sandra, died last week. I saw her most years at a family reunion on a lake in North Carolina. But not these last few years. I couldn't get there, but I would call. When it was Sandra on the line, she'd say, "Who's going to bitch with me if you're not here?"

Sandra and I liked to gossip. We shared a watchfulness of our family and a delight in the more ridiculous elements. You don't realize your family teaches you anything until well after you've learned it. Sandra taught me to pay attention to conversations. Good and bad and confusing. I wanted to know. I wanted to be included. Sandra and I would swap remarks on the patio, and I felt adult. My voice barely carries beyond my teeth, but I would murmur something smart, and Sandra would hear it. "We're bad," she'd say. Yes we were. That's another piece of it. We were just as silly as anyone else in our family. We made fun of them, but they made fun of us, too. The keyword: fun.

Last night, I reran my memory of Sandra standing in the kitchen feeding pickles and bologna to a meat grinder. I wore myself out crying. Pickles and bologna was a tradition I couldn't appreciate when I was younger, but it was still a tradition. Sandra would get us kids to turn the crank while she tamped down the meat and brine. We would pretend to vomit. Someone would tell us not to be rude. There's no shortage of people to teach you manners at a family reunion. People rush to it like you're on fire. The result of the cranking and the tamping was this cat food looking pâté you could spread on crackers and pretend it was gourmet. I didn't try it until I was old enough to drink. I was making a point to acquire tastes. Well, I acquired pickles and bologna like I acquired eavesdropping a long time ago. Fast and easy.

I miss you, Sandra. I've missed you for years, but I still had your voice. Now I have some pictures and a recipe and memories. It's not enough, but it's something. You were always something.